File Names and Scene Rules

19th March 2007 10:56 PM #1

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Alex H is relatively unknown at this point

File Names and Scene Rules

Introduction:

This guide is an introduction to the file naming conventions you will see used when using P2P software. Many people do not understand why files are named the way they are and without that knowledge some people decide to rename the files they download to "make them look nicer".

This document will (hopefully) give you an insight into file naming conventions so at least when you decide to re-name your media, you'll know why the rest of us think you're a moron.

Indexing Structures and Filing Systems:

With any large amount of information, it is important for the people accessing it to have some kind of structure to navigate their way to the information they're looking for. If there is no structure for locating specific data, the collection of information is virtually useless and the task of finding what you are looking for becomes like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

For this reason, a relatively new convention has come into existence for the naming of media files. This naming convention was developed by "the scene" and formally ratified by many - if not most - of the well known release groups under the TDX Standards (TDX02 and TDX05). The use of these standards, along with the media they are attached to, have trickled down to the P2P community from the FTP Topsites they originated from.

Scene Formatting Conventions:

Firstly, you will see a lot of dots; or full stops if you insist on using the 20th century term for them. Get used to it and learn to love 'em.

The reason you see dots instead of spaces (Kind.Of.Like.This) is because different operating systems and software read spaces in different ways. For example, even in simple HTML, a space can often be automatically converted to %20, depending on why kind of software you're using to read it and how well that software converts the encoded text into human-readable text.

For example, websites with broken tables will often revert to raw HTML so the user can - with a bit of difficulty - still read the text. Google's Cache also gets rid of a lot of the formatting of sites that it comes across, so rare files that can only be located via the Google Cache can be very hard to find.

Rather than making people decypher file%20names%20like%20this%20which%20are%20hard%20to%20read, the dots make file.names.much.easier.to.read.

Scene Tagging Conventions:

Knowing the name of the film or TV show you're looking for is a good place to start, but which version is the best? Tags are used in the file name to indicate more information about the file.

Here is a list of common tags:

Aspect Ratio Tags
FS ................ Full Screen (4:3 aspect ratio)

WS ................ Wide Screen (16:9 or 2.35:1 a.k.a "letterbox" apect ratio)

Special Edition Tags
SE ................ Special Edition. Does not include DVDs with more "special features" than previous DVD releases of the title.

DC ................ Director's Cut. Often longer than the version prefered by the studio, this is the closest you'll get to the director's vision for the film.

EXTENDED........... Usually comes with "x minutes of never-before-seen-footage!"

UNCUT ............. Has scenes that were cut from previous releases.

REMASTERED ........ Usually found on old, Black & White movies that have had been re-touched or re-released in colour.

UNRATED ........... Version not rated by the MPAA

THEATRiCAL ........ The version that was shown in cinemas.

Distribution Tags
FESTiVAL .......... Film festival release.

TV ................ TV release.

STV ............... Straight-To-Video release

LiMiTED ........... Limited theatrical release (less than 250 cinema screens).

Version Tags:
PROPER ............ When one group's rip has a technical flaw, another group may release a PROPER, provided they do so within a certain amount of time.

REPACK ............ When a group re-releases their own rip due to the first one having a technical flaw or suffering corruption in transit.

RERiP/RECODE ...... When one group re-encodes a previous release by another group, usually to remove subtitles, fix colour, etc.

REAL .............. When a PROPER release if found to have a flaw itself, another group may release a REAL.PROPER. (It's not unusual to see REALLY.REAL.PROPER tags as new versions are also found to contain technical flaws).

DUBBED ............ Has audio track in a different language to the one it was made in (e.g. Japanese animation films where the audio has been re-recorded in English).

SUBBED ............ Has subtitles hardcoded into the picture.

UNSUBBED .......... Does not have subtitles hardcoded into the picture, usually also contains a PROPER tag.

iNTERNAL .......... Releases tagged as iNTERNAL are not intended to be distributed beyond the release group and their affiliates and many groups release iNTERNALs to avoid their releases getting nuked and the group memebers getting a bad repuation..

READ.NFO .......... Apparently banned under new releasing standards, but means you should read the .nfo file that comes with the release because it contains important iNFOrmation.

Source Tags:
WP ................ Workprint. Rarely seen, a workprint is a version of a film that has not been completed yet. It may be missing scenes, CGI effects, etc.

CAM ............... Camera. Taken with a digital video camera by someone sitting in the cinema. The camera may shake, may be seen or heard during the film and the person doing the recording may have a bad seating position.

TS ................ TeleSync. Same as a CAM except the audio isn't recorded from the camera's onboard microphone, but from an external source like the headphone juack provided for the hard of hearing.

TC ................ Telecine machines copy the film digitally from the celuloid reels and use an external audio source.

DVDScr ............ DVD Screener. Screeners are advance copies sent out to retailers or awards judges for previewing. They usually contain copyright warning messages and watermarks or other techniques used to identify individual copies will be blacked out or blurred.

R5 ................ Region 5 Disc. Early release from Russia. These versions however are rushed out quickly (to beat the bootleggers) and have not received the usual touch-ups given to a film before it's DVD release.

DVDRip ............ Copy of the DVD version that hits the shelves.

DSR ............... Digital Stream Rip. Low resolution (480i) from a digital broadcast and usually in full screen (4:3) aspect ratio.

PDTV .............. Pure Digital Television. Broadcast and received digitally with no analog conversion before ripping. PDTV is also has a lower resolution than HDTV and is more common in rips from the UK and Europe.

HDTV .............. High Definition Television. Broadcast digitally at a higher resolution than PAL and NTSC analog formats. Usually 350MB with 2 channel MP3 audio and video bitrate of 800-1100 kbps.

HR.HDTV ........... High Resolution HDTV. Usually 700MB with 5 or 6 channel AC3 audio and double the video bitrate of HDTV.

Scene Characters Conventions:

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
1234567890.-_

Although not allowed under scene rules, it is not uncommon to see ( and ) in a filename, usually around the production year and frequently around indexing site tags. These are the ONLY other characters that can be used safely without screwing things up at the P2P level. The square brackets [ and ] are not able to be read correctly by a number of P2P apps and, like spaces, are often badly converted to their raw encoding, with is %5B.

Scene File Size Conventions:

Due to the nature of the technology used to encode the media, there is only a certain amount of data that can be held within a certain amount of space before picture and audio quality become so bad that the file is unwatchable.

Of equal consideration is the need for people to back up their media onto blank CD-Rs.

To avoid wastage and ensure good quality media, the following files sizes dictate how much data can be encoded on a file which can then be backed up to CD-R:

20-23 minutes ..... 175 MB
23-35 minutes ..... 233 MB
35-52 minutes ..... 350 MB
52-105 minutes .... 700 MB
105-210 minutes ... 2 x 700 MB

Less common sizes include: 120 MB, 116 MB and 100 MB

As you can see, all the file sizes are divisable by 700MB, so two 350MB files can fit onto one CD-R, three 233MB files can fit onto one CD-R, etc.

Scene rules also dictate that the minimum size for a "full CD release" is 680MB, so file sizes between 351MB and 680MB are not allowed.

Note: Standard sizes for blank DVD-Rs have not been finalized because (believe it or not) not everyone has a DVD burner yet. If you're thinking of ripping something, you're better off using CD-R sizes for now.

File Names For Films

Release.Name.Year.Extra.Source.Codec.CDx-Group

Some exampls:

The.Deer.Hunter.(1978).iNTERNAL.DVDRip.DivX3LM-UNiTED.CD1.avi
Casino.(1995).SE.DVDRip.AC3.XviD-OS.iLUMiNADOS.CD2.avi
300.(2006).PROPER.TS.XviD.CD1-LRC.avi
Metamorphosis.(2007).PROPER.R5.XviD-UNiVERSAL.avi

Indexing sites may also add their own tag to files that have been released on the site after the release group tag, e.g. Metamorphosis.(2007).PROPER.R5.XviD-UNiVERSAL.(PeerWeb.org).avi

File Names For TV Series

Show.Title.SxxExx.Name.Of.Episode.Extra.Source.Codec-Group

Some examples:

Rome.S02E02.Son.Of.Hades.HDTV.XviD-LOL.avi
Hotel.Babylon.S01E05.WS.PDTV.XviD-RiVER.avi
Lost.S03E05.The.Cost.Of.Living.HR.HDTV.AC3.5.1.XviD-NBS.avi
Charlie.Jade.S01E03.You.Are.Here.REPACK.DVDRip.XviD-MiNT.avi

...and an example site tag: Rome.S02E02.Son.Of.Hades.HDTV.XviD-LOL.(PeerWeb.org).avi

Editing File Names Outside Your P2P Application:

Files on your computer actually have two names. One name that your computer uses in its file system which is the one you see on your screen. The other name is the name contained in the file's "header: and the header is actually inside the file itself.

When you edit a filename in Windows, both the Windows name and the header name is changed, but when you edit a filename through your P2P application's library, only the Windows name gets changed.

So, who cares?

P2P networks work on the basis that everyone is sharing the same file, which is why you're able to download from hundreds of people at the same time.

If you change the information in the file's header, that file is no longer the same as the one you downloaded - you actually changed it. That file is now completely different to all the other copies on the network and it cannot be used as a source by people wanting to download the one you downloaded.

This kind of splintering is why you see search results like this:

Example.File.avi .................................. 699.99MB .... 563 Source(s)
example file.avi .................................. 699.99MB .... 1 Source(s)
Example File (really cool download this).avi ...... 699.99MB .... 1 Source(s)
example file (great movie with some actor).avi .... 699.99MB .... 1 Source(s)

The first file is the original, well sourced file. The last three have been edited in Windows and are actually different files - and with only one source each, you probably wouldn't want to start downloading them.

This is actually quite unfair because the three people who renamed their files (the bad way) will probably never upload any data for those files, even though they relied on other people who allowed them to download.

Conclusion:

Now that you've got a basic understanding of why things are the way they are, hopefully you'll think twice before removing important information from your files, or ripping your rare DVD collection into 767MB files which nobody will be able to back up properly.

Just remember: things work better when everyone follows the standards.

Piracy causes legitmate music retailers to lower their prices in order to compete.

I'm doing my part to promote competition. Are you?

Record companies screw us by charging $30 per album. We screw them back by copying the album from somewhere else. This system has worked well for decades.

Like everything else, it all goes to shit when lawyers get involved.